Archive for December 2009

I’m out salvaging a few missions and happen across 2 Angel Extravaganzas in a row. Nice. I salvage as much as I can before the MR starts shooting wrecks. In the Angel Extravaganza there are 2 Dominix battleships – one navy issue, one normal. I start cleaning up as usual. Then this:

﻿[ 2009.12.13 17:20:29 ] Meta2 > no… i dont ordinarily loot
﻿[ 2009.12.13 17:20:39 ] Grand Formage > it is just sad that you must do ill to others to feel successful. another example why the RL is as it is.
﻿[ 2009.12.13 17:20:52 ] Meta2 > what trying to get me to violate game rules? lol… whatever

I’m out scanning down people as I usually do when I find an Apocalypse doing an Angel Extravaganza Level 4 with his best buddy in a salvaging Harbinger by his side. I start grabbing stuff, as I tend to do. Nothing really happens until another pilot in a Punisher warps in and loots a wreck. Then all hell breaks loose.

The Apocalypse pilot starts to shoot the Punisher, which returns fire but is unable to break the Apoc’s huge mission-based tank. I strike up a conversation with the Punisher pilot (Saria Dehmov), who informs me that she has corpmates on the way with a gank Brutix. “They should be here in about 20 minutes.” she states.

20 minutes later there’s no sign of her corpmates, nor of the Apocalypse’s tank breaking, so we start debating alternate ways to blow it up. Most of them involve flying another ship in and switching ships quickly to proceed with a gank, especially since the Apoc pilot doesn’t seem to want to engage.

I offer my Armageddon, but the 200 mil collateral is a bit rich, so we think of other ways to do it. There’s no way I’m letting it out of the hangar without it though, so we start to think of different ships that could get the job done. Since I have a spare Arbitrator a few jumps away and a Guardian in this system, I decide to fit it out in a great team-gank fit.

At this point, it’s been approximately one hour, 45 minutes since we started this fight. I warp into the mission in the sleek Arbitrator, rocking through the gates as fast as I can, and zip in to sit right up next to the Punisher. Quickly ejecting, I let Saria take control of the Arbitrator, cautioning her to keep the neuts off until I’d gotten back in with my Guardian, then warp out. She locks down the Apocalypse and engages the tracking disruptor, keeping him from hitting her very much at all while she waits.

A minute or so later, I’m screaming through the gates in my Guardian, Penirgman’s sun flashing off the red and gold of the hull. Setting up to orbit the Apocalypse at 65km, I engage the afterburner, then target the Arbitrator and toggle on 1 remote armor repairer and the remote capacitor booster. Saria flicks on the Arbitrator’s 4 small neutralizers, starting the work of draining the Apocalypse’s huge capacitor reservoir. Suddenly, my Guardian is under fire by the Apocalypse, but the lasers wildly flicker all about the hull without damaging it, the range too great for even Radio crystals and the Apocalypse’s own range bonus.

Soon enough, the huge guns fall silent, repair ceases, and the Hammerhead IIs tear through the Apocalypse’s armor – it’s no match for them with all the capacitor gone.

This isn’t a very clever story, but it illustrates quite well what happens if you shoot at a ninja salvager.

There’s a repeat “customer” of my services that I see a lot – a bloke going by the name of “edeity”. I’ve salvaged his missions twice now, and as I undock in my Executioner, I see him undock. He’s one of those guys that shoots at ninjas, then runs before they come back. Curious, I watch where he warps off too as I wait the 30 seconds to redock for my Anathema.

A quick set of scans later and I’ve got him narrowed down to a point a bit below the ecliptic. Re-docking, I swap to the Executioner and roar off to his mission. It appears to be a Mining Misappropriation, Level 4. I start salvaging and he locks me up. Good so far. Sliding past one of the Battleship wrecks, I grab a Tachyon Beam Laser I – that’ll fetch nearly a million ISK, no matter what else I get.

Yes! He opens fire as I align to the station. Warping out, I dock as fast as I can, screaming for Scotty to get his butt in gear and get my Armageddon ready for battle. 30 excruciatingly slow seconds later, I’m undocking, then aligning out. A few moments later, I’m pulling into the mission with a blinking red Apocalypse 3000 meters off to the left. Starting target lock, I enable all the requisite awesome modules – warp scrambler, webber, nosferatu, guns. Additional firepower comes in the form of 5 Berserker IIs that flash out of my dronebay and hover menacingly for a bare half-second before the target lock resolves and they scream after the awesome pulses of power from my lasers.

The actual fight is hardly worth mentioning – He doesn’t even get me through shields before he’s into structure, popping as he does the first flash of damage to my hull. The best damage of all was his hit to my shields: